


Turning the Wheel

by ayatsujik



Category: Senjou no Merry Christmas | Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence | Furyo (1983)
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-15
Updated: 2017-08-15
Packaged: 2018-12-15 16:24:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,748
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11809758
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ayatsujik/pseuds/ayatsujik
Summary: Lawrence does Yonoi a favour after the war.





	Turning the Wheel

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers for the end of the Nagisa Oshima movie. 
> 
> Many liberties have been taken with references to Hamlet, the Pacific War, [gingergoldfish's great little ficlet](http://ryuichisakamoto.livejournal.com/19279.html), the novels originally written by Laurens van der Post, and the movie's conclusion. It's not quite what happens in the books and in real life re: treatment of war criminals – e.g. Yonoi should not actually have been able to keep the hair, as you'll see if you read Seed and the Sower. Just think of it being set in the movie's continuum, with the theme song and Sakamoto Ryuichi in eyeshadow. (I was in fact one small step away from calling this A Tribute to Sakamoto Ryuichi in Eyeshadow.)

At the bitter end of resistance, there remained only this certainty.  
  
Under the blaze of Java's sun, a man had severed honour from his soul. His sword had been his mouth; his force, the radiance of his spirit.  
  
=================  
  
Time hung heavy on Yonoi's hands during the last days of August.   
  
It was the eighth month in the 20th year of Emperor Shōwa's reign. The Indonesian leaders announced their independence on the 17th. The same day, Marshal Terauchi sent orders to release the Allied captives. He followed them mechanically. He summoned the commanding officer for the POWs, a gaunt and bearded man. He bowed very stiffly, very brusquely, and delivered his news in terse monosyllables of English:  _You are free. We have lost_. The words felt thick in his mouth, threatening to stifle him.  
  
Then wild cheering exploded from the prisoners' barracks. There were roars, even sobs. Ragged lines of emaciated men, their hollow eyes shining, dragged themselves down the palm-lined roads to the train station, where they were transported to Batavia, the capital city. Yonoi watched them go, hand gripping the hilt of his sword until his abused muscles shot twinges of pain at him.  
  
Once, he knew, he would have answered the demands of honour. He would have ordered everyone to kill themselves rather than surrender to the enemy. Once.   
  
Of course he had contemplated it. But something had stayed his hand, had made him ignore the orders from Tokyo for the mass self-sacrifices. A grievous kind of inertia. In any case, no man in his small camp protested. No incidents of  _seppuku_ occurred. No one, indeed, said anything much about everything that had happened - the Emperor's stunning broadcast, the new-type bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, or the surrender to America. Unbelievable. It was all too unbelievable, too abrupt. Too heavy for words. The magnitude of these revelations sent chills down his spine.   
  
Every last one of his men was fatigued; malnourished; weighted with the blankness of defeat. When he broke the news to them, some had dropped to their knees as if hit by a bullet. But no one showed any signs of wanting to swell the ranks of the one hundred million shattered jewels. Where is the will to resist, he wondered, and condemned himself for not taking the initiative. What kind of a leader, what kind of a man am I?  
  
We have become weak, he whispered inwardly. Degenerate. I have become weak. But no matter how severely he chastised himself, he could not surmount the thought that in such a time, in such circumstances honour was - it was no more substantial than the wings of a white moth, alighting on the charred face of a dead man.  
  
_Forgive me._  In all truth, he was no longer sure who, or what, he was asking forgiveness from.   
  
The remaining Japanese troops joined the convention in Batavia. There he stood at attention during the ceremony of formal surrender, noting with perfect detachment that some of his peers were absent. No doubt they were dead, whether by their own hand or by an enemy's.   
  
The red and blue of the enemy's flag were infernally bright. He looked away; allowed himself to be handcuffed and led onto a ship, headed for England. Several of his inferiors and superiors accompanied him.   
  
Hara, whom he had passed in the surrender room, was headed for another ship. They had not seen each other since his redeployment. Hara had bowed to him, all traces of cockiness absent from his round face. They had not looked directly at each other.  
  
An inspection took place before boarding. He was ordered roughly to strip, to change; his possessions – sword, watch, cigarette case – were all removed.  
  
No one noticed the small twist of paper nestled in the pocket of his undershirt. He retrieved it when the guard watching him turned to receive a message, caching it in the heel of his prison shoes.   
  
===============  
  
One week before the hanging.  
  
Yonoi took to pacing restlessly around his small cell, staring up at the light that streamed through the small hole in the ceiling during the day. Winter was approaching; the skies were growing dark earlier.  
  
The trial had been perfunctory in the extreme, equally or more so than any carried out by the Japanese. Its verdict had never been in doubt, and its execution was to be swift. Yet despite their bristling, formal contempt, the British proved surprisingly humane, giving him adequate food, water and opportunities for personal hygiene. He did not like bread or milk. Nonetheless, he ate what they gave him. After the penury of the Indonesian camps in the closing stages of the war, it was close to decadence. But he slept very little, and the sun's first rays usually found him curled up in a fetal position, stiff and groggy.   
  
He did not, in fact, really want to sleep. The dreams had returned.  
  
He knew them intimately, having endured them for three long years. But before they had been interspersed with different images; their force had been tempered by memories of other longings. The snows of home. The scent of freshly-woven  _tatami_ mats and burning coal. The Shingon Buddhist shrine that housed a beautiful wooden sculpture of the Amida Nyōrai, where it had been his custom to meditate.   
  
Gone was the succour of those other visions. Even the faces of his old comrades – his fellow insurgents of that heady spring – had ceased to intervene. He called their names, silently, begging a forgiveness he did not expect.  
  
Three years later, waiting for death in enemy confines, the dreams regained the intensity of those in the first weeks after that day. Again he was battered by the sensations that filled him on waking from the ghost of Jack Celliers' face, perilously close to his own. Again he was forced to grapple with the turmoil, both mental and physical, that resulted from indulgences in his memory of that fateful afternoon.  _Celliers_. Celliers, Celliers, Celliers. The syllables of his name had the rich, deep echo of a temple bell. Thoughts of Celliers made a queer warmth blossom. Still he was confused. Still something inside him would grow taut, stretched to breaking point.   
  
In this enforced isolation, everything found its way back to Celliers. No mantra he knew could dispel this. There was no escape, no hope of exorcism.   
  
Somewhere, buried in the depths of his anguish, there was even a certain thrill to realize that the forbidden did not actually matter to one facing death: not possessing it, not being possessed by it.   
  
(Blue eyes, bright and clear with defiance; sun-bleached hair; blond stubble on bronze skin. Large hands burning through the fabric on his shoulders. Dry, rough lips grazing his cheeks...)  
  
Perhaps, he said out loud into the close, still air, perhaps I am going mad. He has sown madness, this spirit, he has invaded me, torn away everything I clung to. And I cannot hate him. Is it not bizarre, that a man has made me mad? Isn't it? Perhaps I am just like him, as I have always feared; perhaps he has merely drawn out the ugliness in my soul.  
  
He began to laugh, head in hands. Soon the laughter became a lot more like screaming.   
  
(The guards came and roared at him to shut up. When that command failed, they kicked him in the stomach until he fell off the bench onto the floor, bile and spittle smearing his lips.)  
  
The floor of the cell was cold. How strange, he mused, how strange that I do not want to kill myself. It is not just that I cannot. How far I have fallen, how much I have betrayed…  
  
The queer, giddy warmth was still running through his blood. Yonoi closed his eyes. He was painfully aware of the twist of paper against his chest, lying almost directly over his heart. He groped for it, stroked it with unsteady fingers. Then he made up his mind.  
  
======================  
  
The day before the hanging.  
  
The lock's tumblers squeaked. There came a knock, solid yet restrained, and the door swung open.  
  
It was Lawrence.   
  
"Yonoi-san," he said quietly. He sounded as measured as ever, Yonoi saw. Neither did he look any different, save the freshness of his face and his crisp, new uniform.   
  
He had come, after all. Yonoi was startled; he had not expected the British to actually pass his message on. Furthermore he found himself moved by the man's goodwill, by the unsullied civility of the honorific. He got up and bowed at the angle reserved for a superior officer. Lawrence returned the bow, somewhat clumsily, and took his officer's hat off.   
  
Yonoi gestured to the bench. "Please," he said, and seated himself after Lawrence.   
  
Lawrence folded his hands together on his hat, observing the shadows under Yonoi's eyes.   
  
"I see," he said, "that you have not been sleeping well."  
  
"No," Yonoi said. "I have not."  
  
"I hardly blame you." Lawrence sighed, absently toying with the hat in his hands. "If I had a say in how these things were decided, it wouldn't come to the death penalty."  
  
Yonoi half-smiled. "You are too kind."  
  
Lawrence cracked an answering smile. "You're developing a sense of humour, I see. And your English is as good as ever."  
  
"Perhaps." Yonoi crossed his arms. When he next spoke, his voice was low and halting.  
  
"Why have you come, Lawrence-san?"  
  
"Why?" Lawrence repeated, a surprised look crossing his face. "I should be the one asking you that. You sent for me, didn't you?"  
  
"Yes. But then, you have not -" he stopped, groping for the words, "- you have not come here to mock me? To see my dishonour?"  
  
Lawrence sighed again, running a hand through his hair. "No," he said at last. "No, Yonoi-san, I have not. As a matter of fact I do not think this is a question of honour, or lack thereof."  
  
"Then, if you do not mind answering this question, what do you think it is all about?"  
  
"To my mind," Lawrence said, gazing straight at him, "you are the victim of large, impersonal forces that made you think you were right."   
  
"Forces."  
  
"Yes, forces. Ones beyond your control."  
  
"You do not think, then, that I am wrong?"  
  
"Indeed I do. But you are not alone. Everyone in Japan is the victim of this evil.  _Everyone_  was blinded. Everyone was trapped into believing they were absolutely right. Including us." Lawrence stopped, drawing a breath.   
  
"But the reality is, Yonoi-san, that no one alone is right, and sometimes everyone is wrong."  
  
A silence fell. Yonoi was staring off into space, his shoulders slumped.   
  
"This country has good books," he suddenly said. "I came here for a year so as to learn English, and I like your great writers very much."  
  
"What a pleasure to hear that," Lawrence politely and quizzically replied. "Any one in particular, if I may ask?"  
  
Yonoi turned to face him. "The rest," he said quietly, "is silence."  
  
Lawrence raised his brows.   
  
"Why, Yonoi-san. I had no idea the Bard caught your fancy."  
  
"Yes," Yonoi said. "He does."  
  
"Indeed," said Lawrence. He paused. "On that topic, I do seem to recall another man whom you took a shine to."  
  
Yonoi looked at him.   
  
"Perhaps this is unnecessary," Lawrence said at length, "but I have always wanted to tell you how very sorry I am that your successor put Jack Celliers to death. Somehow I don't think you would have done the same."  
  
_I don't think you would have done the same._  Yonoi went very still. He closed his eyes, letting the words sink in. So Lawrence… But, when he thought about it, he was not surprised. He sensed that Lawrence embodied the proverb about the outsider who saw clearly.   
  
Silence descended again. When he next opened his eyes, Lawrence was still watching him, a small, sad smile on his face.   
  
Yonoi looked away.  
  
"Tell me, Lawrence-san," he said at last. "Why did he - why did Celliers do - that?"  
  
"Do - ah, I see." Lawrence's smile became a touch crooked. "Well, Yonoi-san. Jack Celliers was not a man who liked explaining himself. I can only say for sure that he did it to save Captain Hicksley, but there could have been other things on his mind then."  
  
"Such as?"  
  
"Well," Lawrence began. He appeared to be choosing his words with great care. "I must say it did strike me then that both of you were rather alike in certain ways."  
  
"How?"   
  
He was surprised by the sharpness of his voice. Lawrence blinked, and did not speak immediately.   
  
"For instance," he finally replied, "being hard to predict."  
  
Yonoi did not reply, his eyes on the palms of his hands.  
  
"...Lawrence-san."  
  
"Yes, Yonoi-san."  
  
"I would like to ask you to please do me a favour. If you will be so kind."  
  
"I can try, if it is within my power. What is it?"  
  
Yonoi reached into his shirt and drew out the twist of paper. Lawrence's inclined his head curiously. Calmly, almost reverently, Yonoi unfolded it. He held it out for him to see, watching Lawrence's bewilderment change to comprehension as he studied the coarse lock of hair inside, bleached to near-white by the Javanese sun.  
  
"Yonoi-san," Lawrence said, wonder in his voice. "You really -"  
  
"Colonel Lawrence," Yonoi said, cutting him off with an insistent gaze. "Please take this to my home in Japan and offer it at the shrine of my family's ancestors. If you ask the people there, they will tell you where to find it."  
  
Lawrence opened his mouth to say something, closed it, and nodded. Yonoi drew his hand back and folded the paper with Celliers' hair up before passing it to him.  
  
"If you will be so kind," he repeated.  
  
"It will be done," Lawrence quietly replied, and tucked the paper into his jacket pocket.   
  
For a moment, Yonoi thought, it looked like he was about to say something more. But he only stood up, putting his hat on again.  
  
"Goodbye, Lawrence-san," Yonoi said. He got to his feet and bowed, deeply. "And - thank you."  
  
"Farewell, Yonoi-san," said Lawrence, returning the bow. He took a step towards the door, stopped, and turned around.   
  
"There's another line in that play which I like.  _To thine ownself be true._ "   
  
His final smile was touched with regret. Yonoi watched him leave, and raised his right hand in salute as the door thudded shut.  
  
  
**epilogue**  
  
_Dear Sir,_  
  
_Winter has come, and the ground is layered with white. We hope that you and your family are all in good health._  
  
_We are indebted to you for your visit. It was exceedingly kind of you to go to such lengths for Yonoi. It is indeed difficult to express our gratitude for the spirit of peace and forgiveness you have extended to our family and to our country. The hair of the man that Yonoi wished so deeply to honour has been offered to the gods. Now Yonoi's soul will, thanks to your compassion, find peace in Heaven._  
  
_Permit us to share a small anecdote in passing. With your admirable depth of knowledge about Japan, you might recall that for our people moths symbolize the spirit of a deceased person. Yesterday we saw not just one, but two white moths fluttering around the altar. Who might the other one might have been? Indeed, how many tens of thousands of these moths must be at ancestral altars all over the country?_  
  
_The long and cruel war is finally over. Now is the time for peace, for the renewal of culture. We fervently hope that our suffering will pave the road to a better world._  
  
_Once again, please accept our humblest thanks and heartfelt apologies for your pains on Yonoi's behalf._  
  
_Yours very sincerely,_  
  
_On the 10th day of the 12th month in the 20th year of Shōwa_  
  
_To Colonel John Lawrence_  
  
  
Lawrence put the letter down. He got up from his desk and leaned against the window, looking out. It was warm for a winter night. Moths - ordinary brown ones - were flitting around a streetlamp. A car drove past, the rumble of its engine fading into the distance. The scent of burning pine faintly perfumed the air.  
  
London, although still battered and war-weary, was beginning to recover.   
  
Children were singing in the piled-up snow, their clear voices carrying every word to his ears.  _Surely, goodness and mercy…_  
  
Lawrence passed a hand over his eyes.  
  
"Merry Christmas, Jack." he murmured softly. "Merry Christmas, Hara-san. Yonoi-san."


End file.
